


Parting the Clouds 5 -- The Migration

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [5]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-25
Updated: 2014-10-25
Packaged: 2018-02-22 13:35:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 17,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2509613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Animorphs have a newly rescued andalite hiding out in the forest, and the next step is obvious -- get him home. But human technology is somewhat lacking in the interstallar transport department. Fortunately, there are a lot of yeerks around, and their interstellar transport works fine. The plan is simple -- call down a yeerk ship, hijack it, and hope Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill can outfly any pursuit. </p><p>But while it might be simple, hijacking an alien ship isn't exactly easy. And the Animorphs aren't prepared for the possibility that Visser Three might not be their biggest enemy...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to JustAnotherGhostwriter, who has generously loaned her awesome betaing skills and general support to this project from start to finish and without whom this would almost certainly not exist (and would certainly be much worse), and CompanionofaTimelord, as well as my innumerable temporary beta readers. Also thanks to Featherquillpen, who came up with the series title.

It's not that I didn't trust Ax.

He was, after all, an andalite, and the brother (he claimed) of the one who had given us the power to morph. He'd fought Visser Three with us and had given me no reason to think that his intentions were anything but pure. His refusal to share or even explain any andalite technology that could help us fight the yeerks angered me; his silly cultural rules were getting in the way of defending our planet. But without knowing anything about andalite culture, I knew my view was far too limited to judge him properly for that.

But andalites weren't human. Despite looking a bit like a hodgepodge of animal life, they weren't from Earth, and probably couldn't be reasonably called animals. Humans had a tendency to treat other animals as if they were human, which was usually a mistake; people had been killed by chimpanzees and gorillas they'd considered friends but didn't know how to relate to. Even dogs got mixed messages from owners who tried to comfort them with sympathy in traumatic situations, which wasn't something dogs did or understood. And dogs were reasonably close to us, evolutionarily speaking. Chimpanzees were practically our first cousins. That's not even getting into the recent insights I’d had into whale communication. So I was kind of surprised that we had enough in common with aliens to talk to them at all.

It's not that I didn't trust Ax. I just had no idea how to relate to him.

And the answer to that, of course, was to learn.

I buried my little box of invasion-related facts and musings back under its tree where nobody was likely to stumble on it and undressed. The clothes went into a backpack that I hung from a branch a few trees over, leaving me standing awkwardly in the woods in a leotard. I closed my eyes.

_Wolf._

Ospreys, of course, are faster than wolves. And flying is really, really fun. But there is nothing quite like being able to smell the world come to life around you. Wolves can smell everything. I could smell that there were no other wolf packs in the area. I could smell a rabbit upwind. I could smell that it hadn't rained in a while in the dryness of the earth, and as I headed off into the forest, I began to smell the river over somewhere to the East.

Besides, I didn't want to rely on bird morphs too much. Eventually, the yeerks would recognise what bird morphs we had and being tracked would be a problem. Getting into the habit of using our birds seemed like a bad idea.

Ax's little meadow was only a short walk out for a wolf. On one end near the trees he'd built a small semicircular shack – a scoop, he called it – from leaves and branches that didn't look watertight but that he'd assured us was. Ax himself was galloping across the grass when I arrived. I demorphed under the trees and waited for him to notice me and gallop over. There were a lot of biological questions I was dying to ask. Where exactly were his lungs? Did Earth's atmosphere give him any trouble? How did he eat with no mouth? But those were idle curiosities. Not really important enough to risk offending the alien over.

<Cassie!>

“Hi, Ax. How are you feeling today?”

<I am well. Come and walk across the grass with me.>

I followed Ax as he ambled across the meadow. He was deliberately lowering his speed for me, I think. He led us in a strange pattern, occasionally stopping to retread a patch of grass before suddenly changing direction and heading somewhere else.

<Do you have any sisters?> he asked me suddenly, as he idly crushed grass under one hoof and gazed at the sky.

“Um, no. Rachel does.”

<Yes, Rachel has two sisters and Prince Jake has one brother. And Rachel is female and Prince Jake is male. Are human siblings always one gender?>

“No. It's random. How about you?”

<Only Elfangor.> He turned to look at me with his main eyes. <He died a valiant death. I am honoured to be his brother.>

“How about your parents? Do you miss them?”

<Very much.>

_Strong family ties. Probably raised extensively by parents, like humans._

“Are they soldiers too?”

Ax chuckled in my head. <Andalite females do not fight. My mother is a scientist, she engineers new varieties of grass to eat. Most of the females in my family do. And Noorlin is male – he is my father – but he was born before we had such a need of warriors. He designs spaceship parts.>

_Herbivorous._

“So soldiers normally start their training young, like you?”

<Yes.> He stood taller. <Andalite warriors are highly trained and highly skilled. It takes a long time. Do humans not train so?>

“I don't actually know how long it takes to train a human soldier,” I admitted, “but people don't start until they're adults. None of our little group has any military training at all.”

Ax looked surprised. His stalk eyes stretched to their maximum height and his nostrils flared. He stepped back. <You have no training?>

“None.”

<Then where did you learn to fight as we did in the ocean? Where did you learn such tactics?>

“Experience and logic. We'd fought Visser Three a couple of times before.” We were getting off-topic. “So your parents live on the andalite homeworld?”

<Yes, they have a little scoop in...> he paused, presumably realising that andalite place names would mean nothing to me. <All non-soldiers live on the homeworld, except those stationed with family members.>

_Probably pair-bonding. Probably live in family units._

“You haven't colonised other planets?”

<Why would we, when we can be home?>

_Not expansionist._

Ax looked up at the sky once more. <I have been speaking with Prince Jake,> he said. <We believe that there may be a way for me to get home.>

“Home?”

<Yes.>

“How?”

Ax smiled again, and a chill went down my spine. Alien or not, I knew that smile. It was the smile Rachel gave right before charging into certain death.


	2. Chapter 2

“You want to steal a yeerk spaceship,” Marco said flatly. His tone reflected exactly my feelings when Ax had explained the plan to me.

All the Animorphs were gathered in Ax's little valley. Tobias perched on a branch nearby, barely close enough to hear. He was playing lookout; even though he'd already swept the area and confirmed there was nobody particularly close, we couldn't be too careful.

Ax smiled. <You think it will be dangerous?>

"Dangerous? No, jumping off a ten-story building is dangerous. Sticking your tongue in an electrical socket is dangerous - not to mention painful. But stealing a yeerk ship is beyond dangerous."

<The higher the danger, the higher the honor,> Ax said. <Is this not true?>

Marco gave Rachel a sidelong look. "I think we've found your future husband."

"It may be honorable to try and get a yeerk ship, Ax," Jake said, "but honor isn't our most important goal."

Ax cocked his head. <What else do you fight for, if not honor?>

“Survival,” Marco said flatly.

Jake shrugged. "Look, we're trying to do whatever we can to hurt the yeerks. But we're also trying to stay alive. We're all there is. I mean, no one else even knows there is a yeerk invasion. So if something happens to us..." He let it hang.

<I did not mean to offend,> Ax said. <You are right, of course. You are alone. If you fail, all is lost.>

"So the question is whether this is something we can do without getting killed," Jake pointed out.

"Yeah, we're mostly against the idea of getting killed," Marco added. "So how are we supposed to grab a yeerk ship? They're up in orbit. We're down here. It's not like we can call them up and ask them to come down."

<Yes, we can do that,> Ax said.

"What?"

<We can call them.>

"Right."

<I can create a yeerk distress beacon. They will send a ship to investigate.>

"You mean like, 'Hello? Hello? Is this Visser Three? Could you send a ship down to pick me up?'" Marco said. "Personally, I have had plenty of Visser Three in my life. I don't need to call him on the phone."

<It will not involve that... that foul beast. It will be a minor matter. They will hear a distress beacon and send a Bug fighter to investigate.>

"There’s always at least one hork-bajir and one taxxon aboard each Bug fighter," Marco pointed out. "Anytime you start playing with hork-bajir, it's not a minor thing."

<Do you fear them?> Ax demanded.

"You better believe I fear them."

<Fear is unworthy of a warrior.>

“Did you fear Visser Three that night in the ocean?” Marco shot back. Unfairly, I thought.

Ax's stalk eyes drooped. He pawed at the ground with one hoof. <I will do better next time.>

“No, you won't. Because Controllers are scary. Fighting is scary. It's so scary that sometimes you wish you could just go ahead and die because it's easier than dealing with the terror."

 _Well_ , I thought as I looked around at my friends, _that pretty much killed everyone's happy mood._ I took one of Ax's tiny hands in mine and smiled. “You were terrified fighting against Visser Three – we all were – but you fought well. You can't destroy your fear, but you can fight through it. That's what makes a good warrior. Marco's just pointing out that this is really dangerous.”

<If you get a yeerk ship, can you get back to the andalite home world?> Tobias asked.

Ax seemed abashed, but he answered, <Yes. I hope so.>

<And if you make it, can you do anything to hurry your people up? To get them back here quicker?>

<I am young. Like you. But I am the brother of Prince Elfangor. My people will listen to me. I ... I know that they will come, either way. But yes, perhaps if I can return and tell them how desperate your situation is...>

We exchanged glances. It was a lot of risk for a 'perhaps'. But I knew we were all doing the silent calculations in our heads; helping Ax get home could put us on good terms with the andalites whether they listened to him or not. Anyway, there were more immediate dangers that the others may not have considered. “The invasion aside, we should get Ax off Earth as soon as possible,” I said. “It's not safe for him here.”

<The forest is perfectly safe,> Tobias said, sounding insulted.

“No, it isn't. Look, I know a lot about evolution. We grew up here, on this planet. So did our ancestors. The plants and animals around us have what we need to survive because we evolved with them. But Ax... andalites evolved somewhere entirely different. Terms like 'plant' and 'animal' don't even really apply to anything on Ax's homeworld, no matter how similar they might look. We have no guarantee that Earth plants aren't poisonous to him. Any random biological thing that's harmless to us could be deadly to him.”

Rachel frowned. “And you didn't bring this up until now?”

“There wasn't anything we could do about it. Except send him home.”

Jake took a deep breath. "Okay. Time for a vote."

As if he didn't already know what the result was going to be.


	3. Chapter 3

I wasn't involved in the shopping trip, so I had a couple of days to myself after we made shopping plans. It was a simple enough mission; the boys were just taking Ax to Radio Shack to pick up the electronics he needed. Involving all of us would just make us more likely to get caught.

We'd fought invading aliens. We'd rescued an alien from the ocean, and now we were helping him build a futuristic communicator to send him into space. Somehow, in the last... what, month? Two?... my life had gone off the rails.

But first, I had to sweep the barn, and try not to look suspicious to my Dad in case there was an alien parasite puppetting his body.

“Missed a spot, sweetie.”

“Sorry, Dad.” I went back for it.

“So, uh, how's...?”

“School's fine.”

“Your friends?”

“Fine.”

“You've been having Jake over a lot, is anything...?”

“He's part of my study group.”

“The study group. Right.” The long silence after his words was broken only by my broom and his scrubbing brush as we worked. The barn is pretty big, so it takes a while to sweep. All the cages and things don't make it any easier.

Deliberately calling down yeerk attention didn't seem like the best idea, but we had done far riskier things. We could handle one Bug fighter. Probably. And the rewards... if Ax could speak on our behalf, if we could make a good impression on the andalites by sending home the brother of Elfangor...

But I was just justifying the decision we'd already made. We were going to do it because we were helping Ax. We'd dragged him out of the ocean, but the rescue mission wasn't over. We still needed to get him off the planet.

And once the boys got back with their equipment, the hard part would begin.

“So, uh, how are your grades? The study group helping?”

My knuckles were white on the broom. Of course the 'study group' wasn't helping. I was spending all my time out fighting aliens and my grades were slowly slipping.

“Yeah. It's great.”

Another silence. And not the comfortable kind. Talking to my Dad had always been so easy before the war. I'd say something about school and he'd make some lame pun. We'd laugh. But there was so little that was safe to share with him these days. When I was younger, I used to ask questions and he'd think through them with me to find the answers. _Why don't the birds like their medicine, Dad? Let's think of the sorts of things birds would like and why, Cassie_. But that had been a long time ago.

“How's the funding thing with the cat food company going?” I asked the long, thick silence.

“Good! We got an extension on the contract. No promises yet, but we might be able to put in a couple of bigger cages.”

“That'll be good, with wolves back in the area.”

“Yeah. I daresay we'll have a steady supply of those.”

 _Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh_ my broom went along the floor. A hawk in a cage near my head ruffled his feathers and glared at me when I passed. I ignored him.

Well, I'd tried. Dad had tried. This time, neither of us bothered fighting the silence.

It was almost enough to make me wish I was at the mall.


	4. Chapter 4

“How?” Rachel asked. “How did that happen?” We'd met up in Ax's meadow the day after Ax's shopping trip for a little picnic. I'd brought sandwiches, Rachel had brought juice, and Jake had homemade fruitcake. Ax had brought an armload of electronics connected by fine wires. Marco had brought a long, somewhat ludicrous story about Ax causing a scene in the mall and a narrow escape that involved turning into lobsters and demorphing in front of a strange woman who, thankfully, didn't seem to be a Controller.

<Human instincts are harder to control than it first seems,> Ax said apologetically.

“Human instincts?” I asked.

“Sense of taste,” Marco said. “It's definitely a problem with the sense of taste. You do not wanna see this guy around cinnamon buns. You just don't.”

I really, really did, actually. But there was a more important matter at hand. “The woman. Who was she?” I asked.

“We don't know, some woman,” Marco shrugged. “We got away and she wasn't a Controller.”

“And if she gets captured at any point in the future, the yeerks are going to remember that one time that three lobsters turned into an andalite and a couple of kids in her kitchen,” I said patiently. “The yeerks currently think we're andalites, remember? She's an open security risk.” I made a mental note of it. We needed some sort of system to deal with things like that.

“Frankly I'll be surprised if our andalite cover story holds out for very long,” Jake said. “I mean, they know there were kids at the construction site. They know they have new, unexpected morphing enemies now. It's not hard to put together.”

<It is unlikely that they will guess if you do not give any indication of your humanity,> Ax said. <Andalites do not share technology.>

“The situation was pretty – ”

<We do not share technology.>

Jake lifted both hands in a placating gesture. “Oookay then. So. How's the distress beacon going?”

Ax glanced at the electronics in his arms. <It is almost complete. Now I need only a Z-space transponder.>

“A what?”

<A Z-space transponder,> he repeated patiently. <To channel the signal into and out of zero-space.>

"And since we can't get a Z-Space transponder, it's basically useless, right?" Rachel asked.

<Yes. Totally useless without the transponder.>

Rachel threw up her hands. "Then what exactly are we doing?"

Jake just shrugged. He looked frustrated. I sidled up next to him and gave him a subtle sideways hug.

"Well, I'm guessing that in about two centuries or so, humans will discover zero space and make transponders. Whatever they are,” Marco said. “But in the meantime, I'm going to have a sandwich."

Tobias came drifting down through the branches and leaves of the tree, almost silent. He landed on a low branch of the oak. <No one anywhere near here,> he reported. <Looks safe. At least as far as you guys are concerned. But there's a golden eagle about a quarter-mile south. I think I'll stay out of sight for a while and hope he goes away. So what's up?>

"We have a completely useless distress beacon," Rachel said. "We need a transponder that probably won't be invented on this planet for a century or two."

<How about Chapman?> Tobias said.

"What about Chapman?"

<We know that Chapman communicates with Visser Three,> Tobias said. <He talks to Visser Three on the yeerk mother ship, or on the Blade ship. Wherever Visser Three is. Rachel, didn't you see him talk to Visser Three in his house? Doesn't that mean that Chapman's secret radio thing must have one of these Z-Space transponders?>

<Yes!> Ax said instantly. <If this Controller speaks to any yeerk ship, he would have to have a Z-Space transponder. The yeerk ships are all cloaked. Cloaking technology requires a Z-Space deflection.>

"How big is a Z-Space thingie?" I asked.

Ax held two of his fingers close together, indicating something the size of a pea. <There would be several redundant units in any transmitter. We could take one without it being noticed. At least not right away.>

Rachel stood. "We are not going into Chapman's house again," she said firmly. "The last time we did, we almost got Melissa made into a Controller. We cannot morph her cat again. Chapman is on guard now. It won't be easy this time." She realized what she'd said and added, "Not that it was exactly easy the first time."

"A historic first," Marco observed. "Rachel saying 'no' to a mission."

"Rachel's right," Jake said. "We do nothing that will endanger Melissa again. So the cat is out. Also any other plan that means major risk that Chapman will discover us."

For a while no one said anything.

<I cannot ask anyone to take risks for me. You rescued me from the bottom of the ocean. You sheltered me. And my foolishness almost got Prince Jake and Marco killed yesterday.>

“We don't know this planet won't kill you, remember?” I pointed out.

<It has done me no harm so far. In any case, whether it is the planet or the yeerks that endanger me is irrelevant. You have put yourselves in too much danger on my account already.>

I shook my head. “I think there might be a way to do this without risking capture at all. But...”

“But?” Rachel asked.

“But give me some time. I want to test some things first.”  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

Ants.

That was my thought. Ants. But morphing something so simple bothered me. Ants had brains, but they weren't exactly complicated. Would it affect the way I thought? Would I know who I was? Would I be able to change back?

That's why I wanted to test the morph before proposing the plan. I caught an ant in the barn (a black ant to be precise, although I only picked it because it was what happened to be around at the time), acquired its DNA, and went out to my tree behind the horse paddock to dig up my box of notes.

I found my record of morphing forms and gave them a skim. Jake: green anole, tiger, peregrene falcon, wolf, eel, seagull, dolphin. Rachel: bald eagle, elephant, shrew, housecat, wolf, eel, seagull, dolphin. Marco: gorilla, osprey, wolf, eel, seagull, dolphin, whale. Cassie: horse, osprey, wolf, eel, seagull, dolphin. Ax: -unknown alien morphs-, shark, human, Northern harrier.

I added 'lobster' to the boys' lists and 'black ant' to mine. We were collecting a lot of morphs. I had seven. Most of the group had eight. Eight animals inside them. If there was a limit, we were going to hit it hard. We needed to be smart. That's another reason I wanted to test the ant in advance – no reason for us all to end up with useless morphs if it didn't work.

I buried my box, went wolf and headed for Ax's meadow. I might be morphing alone, but I wasn't about to do it unsupervised. So under the watchful gaze of Ax and Tobias, I found a flat bit of ground without much grass and focused on the ant's hard, segmented little body.

The morphing began very quickly.

"Whoa!"

Falling! Falling!

That was the first sensation. I was shrinking rapidly. The ground was rushing up at me. It was like one of those nightmares where you are falling and falling but never seem to hit the ground. It was the lizard, turned up to eleven. I was still maybe a foot tall when my skin seemed to turn crisp, as if it had been burned. It became hard. Harder than fingernails and glossy black.

My legs and arms shrank rapidly, a third pair of limbs shooting out of my abdomen to join them.

Grass grew around me, huge, raspy spears of it. Grains or dirt became pebbles, then boulders. Suddenly, my eyesight failed.

I was blind!

No, not completely blind. I could see more than just blackness. But my eyes saw no detail. I could see patches of light and areas of darkness. But they were misty and fragmented, like a snowy TV signal, and my ant brain was not interested in them.

No. The world was not about sight any more.

It was all ... something else. I knew I was getting something. Something ... a sense. A feeling, almost.

Then, I could feel ... I could feel my antennae waving. Waving back and forth, searching. Searching ... no. They were smelling. I was looking for a scent. Several scents. It was not like human smell. Not like Jake had described dog scent when he'd morphed his dog Homer. That kind of scent is full of possibilities. Subtleties. This was different. I was looking for just a few scents. Just a few smells.

I braced myself for the onslaught of instinct. The anole had been alert, scared, territorial. The horse had been wary, but less so. I had no idea what to expect from the ant, except that it was tiny and the world was dangerous. The ant's mind opened inside my own.

There was no fear. None.

There was no hunger.

There was no ... no self. No me.

No me.

No ...

My antennae swept the air. Strange. Not home. Not the colony.

Enemy territory.

Smell them. Smell their droppings. Smell the acrid odors they smeared along the ground to mark their boundaries.

<Cassie? It's Tobias. How are you doing?>

Strangers. The smell of others. They would come. There would be killing.

Killing. Soon.

Move.

<Cassie. Answer me. It's Tobias. Talk to me.>

I began moving. My six legs picked their way nimbly. I was a nearly blind insect, picking his way through a forest of giant saw-edged grass blades.

Food. The smell of food. Find it. Take it. Return to the colony with it.

Change direction instantly. Move toward the smell of dead beetle. I was alone. No help. That didn't bother me.

<Cassie? Do you have control of the morph? If you move into the grass we'll lose you.>

Moving faster now. Feet feeling each blade of grass. Antennae sweeping the air, searching for the scent of the enemy. Searching for the scent of the dead carcass that we had to find and return to the colony.

<Cassie! Cassie, you need to get a grip!>

Close now. The scent of food was stronger.

Mandibles working. I felt around the beetle, felt its size. It was too big to carry. I started to cut it up.

<You have to take control! You have to fight! You have to get a grip!>

Or enemies would come. And kill.

The smell of enemies was everywhere.

I saw it. Enemy! Ant, a different ant, not me, not ours. It turned and fled. Beetle. I had to cut up the beetle. Finish my work. Take it to the colony.

<Cassie. Cassie, please answer.>

I was halfway through the beetle's tough outer shell when, suddenly, they were everywhere.

Red ants. Bigger ants. Better ants. Mandibles in my legs, mandibles tearing off my thorax, stinging me. Beetle. Fight the enemies. Call the others. No others. Fight the enemies. Flee. Couldn't flee. I thrashed and tore, plunging my mandibles into the and in easiest reach. I was dying, but that didn't matter.

<Cassie, where are you? Are you ok?>

Didn't matter.

<Cassie, remember who you are. Remember your family. Remember the team. The other animorphs.>

My family. Colony. It would survive. One worker did not matter.

<Cassie, you have to save the world. Get a grip and answer me!>

The world. The colony. Eusocial ants lived in large colonies with a single reproductive mother. So did termites and bees. The only eusocial mammals were naked mole rats, who were also cold-blooded, unlike most mammals. Mammals like whales, with their haunting, barely decoded songs, and leopards who lived alone and elephants who didn't, who had their own death rites but all the orphan elephants left by poachers had severe behavioural problems and humans, aggressive, colonistic humans who had their death rites and families and insatiable curiosity and my mother and father and...

<AAAARGH!>

<Cassie?!>

I was missing four legs, a mandible and my thorax. I was paralysed with acidic stings. The whole fight couldn't have taken more than a few seconds. I focused on human Cassie.

<Cassie, are you alright?!>

<Argh! Argh!> I grew. My fractured exoskeleton was replaced with fresh skin. My broken limbs healed themselves and became human arms and legs. Bones formed inside my squishy body. The living machines tearing me apart became minor inconveniences, their own jaws tearing apart around my growing body. “Argh!”

<Not good?> Tobias asked necessarily.

<Are you alright?!> Ax asked in alarm.

“No. Yes. Now. Tobias...”

<Hmm?>

“Promise me you'll claw my eyes out if I _ever_ suggest going ant again. Ant is a bad idea. A very bad idea. Ugh. I shouldn't even have risked insects. Their brains are so simple.”

<But,> Ax said in confusion, <in a morph you maintain an open Z-space connection. Your higher faculties are supported outside the body. So long as the brain isn't damaged, the simplicity of it shouldn't prevent you from thinking – >

“They don't have any sense of self-preservation, Ax. I didn't care if I died. It didn't matter. I didn't remember I couldn’t morph, I couldn't remember who I was because it just didn't _matter_.”

Ax looked alarmed. <That's really...>

“Not going to work.” I shook my head, trying to dispel the memories of those violent, mindless things attacking me, a drone, a working, mindless thing. “Never again.”


	6. Chapter 6

“We could try a different insect,” Rachel suggested. We were in her bedroom, mere hours after my experiment. Ax was in Northern Harrier morph, perched on Rachel's dressing table next to Tobias. It looked strange, but they could both be hidden fairly easily if somebody interrupted us and his weirdly familiar human morph would have been almost as suspicious.

“No,” I said. “Insects as a whole might just be too dangerous.”

“Or it might just be an ant thing and a non-social insect might be fine.”

“Do you want to risk that? Because I don't.”

“Maybe,” Jake said gently, “somebody else should try it. I mean, everyone's different; maybe Cassie's just got the wrong sort of mind to – ”

I glared at him. “You think I'm too weak.”

“That's not what I said!”

It's what he meant. But fighting about it wouldn't help, especially since I was already so shaken up. I took a deep, calming breath. “Please just trust me when I say that ants are a terrible idea. The lizards might work. But not ants.”

Jake watched me a long moment before nodding. “We could do lizards. They're a bit more... obvious than I'd like, but...”

“Fluffer,” Marco said. “We'd have to get Fluffer McKitty out of the way again. Unless you want to be cat food.”

Tobias spoke up. <Rachel could – >

“No. I'm not doing Fluffer. It's too much of a risk for Melissa.”

<Not to go for the transponder. But just as, you know, a general lookout...>

“It's too much risk,” Rachel said firmly.

“Uhm.” I had a plan. But I knew that none of them were going to like it. “About Melissa.”

“Hm?”

“I keep thinking about that night at the construction site. We were there because you'd dragged me along to buy some new jeans, remember?”

“To stop you from dressing like a farmer? Of course I remember. You still dress like a farmer.”

“Anyway. What if I hadn't been there? It could so easily have been you guys and Melissa, you know.” I bit my lip.

“But it wasn't. And we're lucky it wasn't, because then we'd all be in even more danger, including her.”

“Jake's not in more danger,” Marco pointed out. “She'd probably have been in less danger as an Animorph. But where is this going?”

“She wouldn't have been in less danger because she'd be an Animorph,” I pointed out carefully. “She'd be in less danger because she'd know what was going on.”

They all stared at me. Rachel was outright glaring. “What are you saying, Cassie?” she asked carefully.

“I'm saying that Melissa is eventually going to stumble into something she shouldn't see and get herself infested. Unless she knows better.”

“You want to enlist Melissa's help. You want to turn her into some kind of spy? You'll get her killed!”

“Captured,” Marco corrected. “But Rachel's right. It's way too much of a security risk.”

“We can't go telling other people,” Jake agreed.

<Isn't that what Prince Elfangor told us to do?> Tobias asked.

“We don't have any proof,” Jake said.

“We have a blue furry alien,” I said. “If we're doing this, doing it while we still have Ax is ideal.”

Marco nodded thoughtfully. “We use Ax as the face man. She doesn't have to know that any of us are human.”

“We tell her what's going on, and we make it very, very clear that she can't let on that she knows,” I continued.

“I'm not listening to this,” Rachel said shortly. “It's not even worth considering. We're not dragging her into this.”

“She's already in this,” I insisted. “It's safer for her to know that she's in it.”

“No. You say that, but what you mean is that you want her to get this transponder for us. And then you'll want her to spy for us. No. We're not doing it.”

Jake put up one hand. “Does anybody else have any other suggestions for getting this transponder?”

<We have other known Controllers,> Tobias pointed out.

“Yeah, but we don't know how, where or if they contact yeerk ships,” Jake replied.

“Tom is out, it endangers Jake's cover too much,” I said.

Jake nodded. “It's getting late. Let's sleep on it. We can have this discussion again tomorrow.”

“There's no discussion to be had. This isn't her fight.”

“It's everyone's fight!”

“Rachel. Cassie,” Jake said “Not now. Let's sl – ”

“Which is Jake-talk for 'let's ignore the protests and forge ahead anyway,'” Rachel snapped.

Jake frowned. “There's no 'Jake-talk' for 'let's ignore the pr – '”

“She's right, dude,” Marco said. “That's exactly what happens when you say that.”

<Perhaps,> Ax said loftily, <if you would listen to your Prince the first time – >

“I'm nobody's Prince!” Jake snapped, slightly louder than necessary. We all froze. If Rachel's mother or sisters heard us arguing... well, it wouldn't be the end of the world, but it could be kind of awkward.

Rachel glanced at Jake, then at me.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed quietly. “But we _will_ talk about it.”


	7. Chapter 7

At school the next day, I pondered the question.

I still thought that we needed Melissa. Not just to get the transponder either. We needed secret allies, people who could protect themselves and others with their knowledge. And the best way to get her on board was to have a real live alien to show her. We needed her before we sent Ax home. Convincing her would be easy. It was convincing the others to get on board that was hard.

Marco seemed to be on board. Tobias and Ax hadn't protested. Jake... might be tricky. But Rachel was the real opposition. Rachel didn't want her friend hurt. She didn't want any of her friends hurt. She'd always been that way. When we were kids, it was Rachel who'd scold and stare down the boys who pushed her friends and pulled their hair. When we reached high school and the dangers were more social, she became pretty and popular and used that power as a shield for her friends. And with alien invaders coming to take the very bodies of the people she was close to, she turned into an elephant and crushed them underfoot.

“Cassie?”

I pulled myself out of my thoughts and looked up to meet the eyes of Mr Tidwell. Known Controller, rank and duties unknown. He stared right into me and for half a second I was certain he could hear my thoughts. He knew! He knew that we were enemies!

No, that was just paranoia.

“Cassie, can you answer the question?”

“I... uh... I'm sorry, I didn't catch...”

“Do try to pay attention. I want to see you after class, ok?”

“Yes, Mr Tidwell.”

Stupid. I needed to look normal at school. I couldn't zone out all over the place. I tried to focus on history. The Melissa thing could wait.

After class, Mr Tidwell called me over to his desk and peered at me over his tiny glasses. “Are you okay, Cassie?”

“What? Yeah! Yeah, I'm fine.”

“Are you sure? You used to be a good student. But recently your grade's been slipping, you've been zoning out, even falling asleep in class...”

“It's just... you know, normal school stress.”

“Is everything ok at home?”

“Yes! Yeah, everything's fine.”

“You're sure? Nothing bad has happened?”

 _Only finding out about the alien slug in your brain._ “No. Nothing.”

Mr Tidwell nodded. “We have counsellors at this school, you know. You can go see them any time.”

“I know. I don't need one. But thanks.”

“Well, if you're sure. But please think about it.”

“I will. Thanks, Mr Tidwell.”

The alien invader was concerned over my grade? My home life? Really?

Had I done something to make him suspicious?

I met up with Rachel for lunch. We didn't sit with the boys. We hadn't hung out as a single group before the construction site and it would be suspicious to do so afterwards.

We also shouldn't really talk about Animorphs-related information where we could be overheard. We ate our lunch in near-silence and then went for a walk around the lesser populated parts of the school grounds.

“Melissa,” I said.

“No,” she said.

“You don't want her to know she's in danger?”

“Not if it puts her in more danger! Why do we have to drag everyone into this war?!”

After a few seconds, I said quietly, “Because it affects everyone.” I hated myself for what I was about to say. “She's your friend. I know. And we've been friends for like forever, but since this whole thing started, we've only really fought aliens together and talked about fighting aliens together.”

Rachel nodded. “Cassie, that time... where they dragged you down to the pool...” she shook her head. “Even just at the construction site, when we split up, I... enough of us are in danger already.”

“I know. She's a friend of yours who hasn't been... tainted... by this invasion.”

“I don't want to have to worry about her as well.”

“It's not your job to protect everyone, Rachel.”

“Really? Since the construction site, I'd say it _is_ my job to protect everyone.”

“And what if protecting them means giving them the tools to protect themselves? The whole reason that Melissa's in danger is because she doesn't know that she needs to stay out of the yeerks' way. She can't make the decisions to protect herself if she doesn't know what she's protecting herself from.”

“She shouldn't need to – ”

“She thinks her parents don't love her, Rachel. Can you imagine being in her position right now?”

Rachel stood perfectly still for about ten seconds. Then, finally, she nodded once. “Fine. I'll do whatever you want to do, Cassie. If you think it's so damn important.”


	8. Chapter 8

We waited until about midnight.

<Everyone clear on their roles?> Jake asked.

<Yep.>

<Yes.>

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

<I'm not a Prince, Ax.>

<Let's do this.>

<I got eyes on the cat, he's a couple of blocks away,> Tobias reported. <You should be in the clear.>

<Right, let's go.>

<I still don't like this,> Rachel said as she trotted towards the house. I felt her cat body sway above me. Jake and I were lizards clinging to her belly and trying to avoid attacking each other. We were backup. Marco and Ax were perched on the roof of a house a few doors down from the Chapmans' place, a house that was conveniently for sale. The front door had been unlocked and one of the back windows opened before we began.

Rachel sauntered through the cat door, paused momentarily in the kitchen to sniff a dish of dry cat food, and then headed upstairs. Melissa's door was open; she leapt onto her bed and pushed her head under one hand, purring.

“Mhmm?” Melissa half-opened one eye, and then closed it again.

In a carefully practised mental voice that sounded nothing like Rachel, Rachel said, <Hello, Melissa.>

Melissa opened her eye again. “What's that, Fluffer?”

<I said hello.> Rachel rubbed one cheek against Melissa's wrist. She purred louder.

“Hello, Fluffer. Am I dreaming?”

<Yes. And I need you to come with me. Quietly, so we don't wake your parents.>

“But I don't want to get up. It's cold.”

<It's just a dream, Melissa. Come on.> Rachel leapt off the bed and headed for the door.

“Fluffer. Wait!”

<This is the most ridiculous thing we've ever done,> Rachel remarked privately as we led Melissa through the yard and down the street.

“How far are we going?”

<Not far. Just to this house here.> Rachel led her up the path to the for-sale house. <Open the door.>

Melissa did. Jake and I let go of Rachel's fur and headed to opposite sides of the room, where our green anole brains might stop screaming at us to attack each other. Marco and Ax fluttered in from the back. Tobias would join them after one last security sweep of the outside.

Melissa walked into the room uncertainly, feeling for the light switch. The electricity was off, of course.

<Melissa,> Rachel said, <We need your help.>

Melissa frowned and glanced between the cat at her feet and the birds perched on the floor across the room. “You do?”

<Yes. And we need to talk about your parents.>

“... Why?”

<Your parents love you very much, Melissa.>

“...Okay...”

<My friend, that bird over there, he wants to show you something. Now, it might be frightening, but he won't hurt you. You're safe, okay? And it's something that you need to see. So don't run.>

In reply, Melissa firmly closed the front door behind her and stepped forward.

<My friend is a shapeshifter.>

On cue, Ax started to demorph.

Melissa stared wide-eyed as the northern harrier started to grow very quickly. But when feathers began to dissolve into fur and blue deer legs shot out of his chest, she let out a small scream and felt for the door. Rachel dashed forward and leapt into her arms. <It's ok! This is normal. It's ok. Please stay.>

Melissa nodded slowly and turned back around. She bit her lip, trembling, and watched Ax get to his feet just as his stalk eyes shot out of his head. <Hello, Melissa.>

“Who... what... are you?”

<I am an andalite. An alien.>

“An alien.”

<Yes. We've come to protect you.>

“Protect me? From what?”

<Invaders.>

<Our enemies are body snatchers,> Rachel explained. <They crawl inside your ear and take control of your brain. The people they control are just puppets. The invaders need to leave their hosts every three days to feed, but they just lock them up until they're done. They plan to take over the entire Earth.> She carefully avoided the word 'yeerk'. The less new words that Melissa could accidentally say to somebody else, the safer she'd be.

“So why...” her eyes widened. “My parents!”

<They gave up their freedom in exchange for yours,> Rachel said.

“I have to save them.”

<You can't. Not yet. We will save them eventually. We will save your entire planet. But for now, you have to be patient. Getting yourself caught won't help anybody.>

“And you're all shapeshifters?” She glanced from the cat, to the birds, to the blue alien. “Here to protect us.”

<Yes.>

She nodded. “What do you need me to do?”

<Mostly, pretend you know nothing. Stay out of their way. Their leader already wanted to take you once before. You can't let yourself be caught, do you understand? Don't do anything to make them suspicious of you. Tell nobody – anybody could be an enemy, including your teachers and your friends. Don't do anything dangerous.> She hesitated. <That said, we do need your help for one thing.>

“What?”

<There is something in your house that we need to get. We'll send in an agent to get it, but they'll need your help to move around.>

“What thing?”

<Nothing you'll recognise. Our agent will handle it. We will contact you tomorrow afternoon. Oh, and Melissa? Stay away from the Sharing. It's a front organisation used by our enemies to get new hosts.>

“I knew there was something creepy about those guys!”

<Go back to bed now. And remember, stay safe,> Rachel said.

Ax trotted forward. Melissa, to her credit, didn't back away. He held out one delicate blue hand. A silver chain with a glittery star pendant dangled through his fingers – a cheap trinket from the mall. <Take this with you.>

She took it. “What... what is it?”

He smiled his andalite smile. <A reminder. So that you will know that this was not a dream.>


	9. Chapter 9

<This could still be a trap,> Rachel remarked as she soared over Melissa's house. It was the next evening, and she was a bald eagle.

<We can be pretty sure she isn't a Controller,> I replied. <This is the least risky plan we have. For everyone.> I rolled my tongue around the tiny tool in my mouth and clung tighter to her talon with my little lizard legs. The lizard did not like being so high; nor, truth be told, did I. Tobias and Jake had wanted this mission, but we'd reasoned that with Tobias trapped in morph we wanted to go as long as possible before the yeerks started keeping an eye out for a red-tailed hawk. Rachel had convinced everyone that her eagle, although far more distinctive and recognisable than any of us liked, was a better choice for carrying a lizard and in any combat if the plan went south. And I wanted to be involved since I sort of felt responsible for the whole plan. If something went wrong, if somebody was getting caught in that house, it should be me.

<You're sure about the timing?> I asked.

<Unless they changed the schedule since the cat thing, yes.>

Ax was perched on a house down the road, within thoughtspeak range. We needed his instructions on how to get the Z-space transponder, but he didn't have an appropriate morph or knowledge of Earth animals to go in himself.

Rachel landed on Melissa's bedroom windowsill. Melissa was at her desk, poring over what was probably homework. Rachel tapped on the glass. <Melissa.>

Melissa froze for a second, then glanced over at Rachel's tapping. She pulled the window open. I noticed that she was wearing the star pendant. “What do you need?” she whispered.

<Your father is about to go down to the basement. Don't follow him. Stay out of his way. But before he goes down, I need you to get my friend here onto his body.> I crawled off Rachel's leg and onto the sill. Melissa put one hand down flat in front of me and I climbed aboard. <Can you do that?>

“Yeah, no problem.”

I crawled under Melissa's sleeve while she headed out to loiter in her bedroom doorway. We waited, listening. A little while later, we heard the front door open. “That's him, coming home late,” Melissa murmured. “He's always in a bit of a rush when he comes home at this time.” She headed downstairs.

<Time, Ax?> I asked.

<You have been in morph for nineteen of your minutes.>

Nineteen minutes. I could work with that. Rachel hadn't had any problems with exceeding morph time on the meetings she'd spied on... but then, she had been caught.

Mr Chapman walked past Melissa in the kitchen. She reached out and grabbed his sleeve; his big, heavy coat sleeve. Perfect. I scampered along under his arm and then down inside his coat. Where was the best place to hide, to be neither seen nor felt?

“Daddy? Can you help me with this homework problem?”

“Later, sweetie. I'm busy right now.” The yeerk sounded awkward, disinterested. I could see why Melissa thought her parents didn't love her.

A big pocket! Yes! I scampered into his pocket. Would he take off the coat before calling Visser Three? Surely not. He would've done that at the door if he was going to, wouldn't he?

I was in luck. Chapman kept the coat on as he headed down the wooden steps to the basement. I peeked out the top of his pocket. I couldn't really see what was in front of us, but I got a good view of everything to his left.

The basement itself was a pretty normal basement, filled with old boxes of stuff. There was a washing machine in one corner. Chapman walked across the floor and around a large stack of boxes which hid a simple wooden door, padlocked shut. He quickly unlocked and opened it (his keys weren't kept in my pocket, thank goodness) to reveal another door, steel with a small, lighted rectangular panel in front. So the other door was just to avoid prying eyes, then. Chapman pressed one hand to the panel; it lit up and the door slid open.

As soon as it whooshed shut behind him and I confirmed that we were in a small room filled with scifi-looking equipment, I scampered out of his pocket and onto the floor. My lizard brain took me to the corner of the room. <Okay, Ax, I'm in. What am I looking for?>

<What do you see?>

<Uhm... a desk and an office chair. Chapman's sitting down. There's a computer, the keyboard and monitor look human but they're connected to some kind of red cube I've never seen before. There's a big black box in the corner with a metal pole sticking out the top and something on top of it... a light, I think?>

<The back box is the communicator. It will definitely have Z-space transponders, but if this Chapman is there to communicate with Visser Three then it will be in use and tampering with it will be dangerous. Our best bet is the computer, if he does not use it. Can you access it without being seen?>

The little red cube was on a tiny shelf bolted to the underside of the desk. <Yes, I think so. But I can't demorph and use my hands in here.>

<You won't need to. You remember how to use the spot releaser I gave you?>

<Yes.>

<Then when you can, take off one side of the cube. The attachment points are in the corners.>

Chapman straightened his lapels, sat up in his chair and glanced at his watch before looking expectantly towards the middle of the room. I crept to the underside of his desk.

The globe on top of the pole of the communicator lit up brightly, hurting my little lizard eyes. I clamped down on the sudden panic rising in my mind – I couldn't afford that right then. In the centre of the room, where Chapman was looking, a large, fuzzy cube of light began to form. Suddenly, it snapped into definition. Then the light began to change. It took on different colours and moulded into a new shape.

The four hooves appeared. The bluish fur. The many-fingered hands. The flat, intelligent face with no mouth and only two long slits for a nose. The penetrating, almond-shaped main eyes. Then the strange extra eyes, mounted on stalks that turned this way and that, looking around the room. Last came the tail; the wicked, curved, scorpionlike tail.

I braced for the undefinable dread that always came with Visser Three's presence, the total fear that seeped into your brain. I knew my lizard would want to flee.

Nothing.

The Visser was scary, of course. Terrifying. I'd watched him eat the andalite prince alive. But the creeping, irrational dread that always accompanied his presence wasn't there. Was it my lizard brain? Was the simplicity of the brain protecting me?

"Welcome, Visser," Chapman said in a very humble voice. “Iniss two two six of the Sulp Niaar pool submits to you. May the Kandrona shine and strengthen you."

Iniss two two six of the Sulp Niar pool. I made a mental note of the name as I headed behind the little red cube on its tiny shelf. There was about two inches of room and barely enough light to see anything, even as a lizard. It was dusty. Good. That meant it wasn't moved much. I aimed my little tool at one corner of the red cube and pressed the tiny button.

"And you, Iniss two two six," Visser Three said. It took me a moment to place the voice; it was a voice, not thought-speak, but is sounded reasonably close to how the Visser sounded in my head. Telepathy! Of course! Visser Three projected an aura of fear and dread around him in thought-speak, much how Prince Elfangor had projected courage at us right before he died. That's why we were nearly paralysed with fear and dread whenever we got close to him. And the communicator didn't project thought-speak. I quickly aimed my tool at the other three corners of the panel I was removing. With a faint clunk that I fervently hoped neither Controller would hear, the panel fell forward onto my little lizard body. I moved around it, letting it rest against the wood of the desk.

"Report, Iniss."

"Yes, Visser."

I could see almost nothing inside the computer, but my little lizard feet found the shapes of various rectangular prisms and jagged combs. <Ok Ax, what am I looking for?>

<A small crystalline sphere. Like a glass pebble. It will be the only spherical thing inside. Do not damage the ports.>

“Sharing membership has increased ten per cent in the last period, with a special level of interest among adolescents,” Chapman reported. “With the school system – ”

"I do not care about such trivialities. Is there progress on locating the andalite bandits?"

"No, Visser. Nothing yet."

"I want them found. I want them found NOW!"

I felt around until I found a hard, pea-sized sphere. It hung from two wires, one stuck in a little port at either end.

In a calmer tone, Visser Three went on. "This cannot go on, Iniss two two six, it cannot go on. The Council of Thirteen are not happy. They wonder why I reported to them that all andalite ships near this planet had been destroyed and all the andalites killed. They are suspicious. They are angry. And when the Council of Thirteen is angry with me, I am angry with you."

Council of Thirteen. Must remember that. I carefully tugged the wires out and carried the transponder out of the computer in my mouth. I didn't try to replace the back; the dust buildup suggested that the computer never moved and I didn't want to risk making any more sound.

“Yes, Visser. We are moving ahead with the investigation as fast as we can, but it is difficult without raising suspicion. We believe they are hiding somewhere in the mountains, but that's still a big – ”

“Suspicion? They are four-legged blue aliens. They have to worry a lot more about hiding than you do. We only need one live andalite and we have everything. Just one.”

“We will keep searching, Visser.”

I raced along the underside of the desk, dropped gently onto the edge of Chapman's chair, and scampered as quietly and unobtrusively as I could into his coat pocket.

“Good. You realise, of course, that your failure in this matter is what has brought Visser One. You realise that if you had caught the bandits in a timely manner, the Council would not have sent her. You realise that it is vital that the bandits be found immediately.”

“Yes, Visser. We will… we will find them.”

“Good. Because if you fail, you're useless to me. Worse, you're a disappointment. And I don't tolerate disappointment. But when you succeed, we'll have some nice new andalite hosts. And I will need to find some deserving yeerks for those hosts. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Visser.”

“Good. Now about the Western expansion...”

The rest of their conversation was littered with terms I didn't know. They regularly slipped into what I was pretty sure was an alien language.

<Time, Ax?>

<You have been in morph for ninety five or your minutes.>

 _Come on, come on, let's leave already._ I didn't want to be trapped as a lizard. Although logically, it could be useful for fighting yeerks. I could do stealth missions with no time limit. I could live in a tank in Rachel's room – or Jake's. Then I could spy on Tom, but Jake did own a dog...

Finally, the communication cut out. Chapman stood and walked briskly out. I waited until he was out of the basement before dropping onto the floor (keeping an eye out for Fluffer). Trying to get out while carrying the transponder in my mouth was far too risky, especially since Chapman had already caught an Animorph spy in his house before. I needed to unload the transponder quick.

There was a crack in side of the fifth stair, just under the stair lip. That'd do. <Time?>

<One hundred and three of your minutes.>

Seventeen minutes to get out. No sweat. I scampered up the stairs; huge walls followed by open, flat expanses. Safely onto the first floor.

<Where's my exit?> I asked.

<Melissa left the bathroom window open a crack,> Rachel said. <Um, into the kitchen and turn left.>

I scampered across the skirting board of the kitchen, fully aware of how my little green body stood out against the cream. But I was a lizard. Lizards were everywhere. Mrs Chapman was cutting vegetables at the sink; she didn't turn around, didn't notice me.

Under the bathroom door. Out the bathroom window. Easy. Crouched under a bush in the backyard, I went osprey and got out of there.

We were one step closer to sending Ax home.


	10. Chapter 10

That night, we had a picnic under the sun. We were in Ax's meadow. Tobias was keeping watch. He kept calling my name, which was a bit annoying, because I was trying to concentrate on the beetle I was cutting up with my teeth.

<Cassie.>

I wished he'd leave me alone.

<Cassie, remember who you are.>

I had to work quickly, before the enemies got my beetle.

<Cassie, please answer me.>

It was too late though, because Marco's mandibles were already crushing my waist. Rachel grabbed one of my arms, pulled it away from my beetle and ripped it right out of its socket.

<Cassie! Demorph!>

Marco neatly sliced through my spine as Jake's mandibles closed around my neck. I felt blood gush from my body out into the meadow. There was a major artery right next to the spine. It didn't matter, though, because I couldn't breathe with Jake crushing my throat anyway. It didn't matter.

<Cassie, you have to save the world!>

I was drowning in blood. No, not blood. The yeerk pool. I had to breathe in, had to drown before one of them forced their way into my head and learned about the Animorphs. I took a deep lungful of the goo, a burning in my throat to accompany the sudden sharp pain in my ear.

“Aaaargh!!” I sat bolt upright in bed, pulling the covers away from my face and neck. I couldn't breathe, but I had to, I had to breathe. I glanced at my alarm clock. 1:26 am. Wonderful.

Had I woken anybody? I hoped not. That could hurt my cover.

I wasn't going to get back to sleep, I knew. But I could work. I could think.

Telepathy. Visser Three cultivated an aura of fear and dread on purpose, through thought-speak. Could we do that? Could we use raw emotion to disorient or confuse our enemies?

More importantly, how could we protect ourselves from it?

Ax was really careful about sharing andalite technology. Did that stretch to thought-speak? Would he teach us how to project emotion? I didn't want to ask him if it was going to offend him. Ax was the core of our good impression to the andalites, and we needed andalite support. I was sure we could learn ourselves, if we practised. He might not even be able to teach us. The andalites communicated in thoughts and concepts naturally, whereas our own thoughtspeak was clearly an extension of our natural phonetic communication – we thought words at each other. Which made it a little confusing that we even had words like 'andalite' that could be translated into sound at all. The andalites didn't even communicate verbally, so why did they have a phonetic name for themselves? Did they come up with it? Had somebody else?

I was too tired to think, too tired to reason. I was always too tired. My time was split between school and life and fighting aliens, and what little time I did have for sleep was interrupted by nightmares. I couldn't go anywhere for help. It was too suspicious. All I could do was hold on by myself.

Keep holding on .

Keep fighting.

But if we could get Ax home to present our case, maybe I wouldn’t have to hold on for all that long.


	11. Chapter 11

The next morning, Marco happened to stroll down the Chapmans' street and check the mailbox of the house for sale. Inside was a little white envelope, and inside the envelope was a little round crystal, about the size of a pea.

That afternoon, we all stood in Ax's meadow, around the completed communicator.

<It is ready,> he announced.

“We can't do it here,” Marco said. “If this fails, we have to keep this meadow safe.”

“And they think we're a bunch of andalites hiding out in the mountains,” I pointed out. “It's probably best to encourage that impression when they find out about this.”

<There's an abandoned gravel quarry in the mountains,> Tobias said. <Nobody's ever there.>

“How do you know that?” Rachel asked. “Have you been patrolling the mountains?”

<Yes, of course. Keeping an eye out for yeerk activity. Remember the supply ship?>

“Fair enough.”

<It's about an hours' flight away.>

Jake bit his lip. “An hour out, give it an hour or so for the plan, an hour back? That's three hours' absence even if we don't run into unexpected trouble.” Marco barked a laugh. Jake silenced him with a look. “Not something we can get done on a school night. I'm thinking Saturday.”

“Yeah, Saturday is good,” Rachel agreed.

“Gives us time to get our affairs in order before inevitable death,” Marco added.

“You can't tell any – ”

“I know, Cassie, no blowing our cover. I wasn't actually going to get any affairs in order.”

“Uh, right.”

We broke up the meeting. Jake took me aside. “Marco's out.”

I frowned. “Huh?”

“After this. He says he'll help Ax but then he's out.”

I nodded. I guess there was nothing holding him to the group but his feeling of debt towards Ax's brother. I'd hoped his friendship with Jake would be enough, but I could understand how he felt responsible to stay alive and around for his father. I could get that. I didn't agree with it, but I understood it. And to be perfectly honest, if it were my parents? I mean, if I died in the war, my parents would be really sad. They'd mourn me for years, maybe forever. But they'd live. They might have another child. If Marco died... yes, I understood where he was coming from.

“Why are you telling me this, specifically?” I asked.

“Because you're, well, the relationship person.”

I raised a brow. “I'm the 'relationship person'?”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head, bemused. _Cassie: amateur biologist, shapeshifter, relationship person_. I should get business cards made.

So we'd send Ax home, and then Marco would leave. Could I find a way to keep him? Maybe. But probably not. From the beginning, he'd been the most likely to leave. Success in this mission would mean we were two soldiers down. But at least Marco would know what was going on. He could cover for us, protect himself and his dad. It could be worse.

We could lose members by getting them killed.


	12. Chapter 12

The quarry was about an hours' flight from my house. I had no complaints there. Flying was awesome.

<These are excellent eyes!> Ax the Northern harrier said. <Far better than your human eyes. Even better than my andalite eyes.>

<Yes, birds of prey usually have great daytime vision,> Tobias said. <I think mine may actually be a little better than yours, though.>

<I doubt that,> Ax said. <It is hard to imagine better vision than this.>

<Remember the good old days?> Marco asked. <When we used to argue over who had the best jump shot? Now it's who has the best bird eyes.>

We were sailing above a patch of woods. It was almost solid green below us. We had risen high on a beautiful thermal. A thermal is a warm bubble of air that acts like an elevator, letting you soar high with almost no effort. I just hoped there weren't any birdwatchers around. Not only were we the most unlikely flock ever, but Rachel was carrying little box about the size of a remote control – Ax's communicator. She was the biggest bird. She got stuck lifting the weight.

<I have an idea,> Marco said. <Let's just blow off this suicide mission and spend the day flying around.>

<Sounds good to me.> I meant my response to be lighthearted. It sounded just a little too serious.

<There's the quarry,> Tobias announced. <Dead ahead.>

<Dead ahead. Excellent choice of words,> Marco said.

We made a large circle over the area, looking for anyone who might be in the woods. But there was no one. We spiralled down from the sky. Down into the deep, open gash in the earth that was the gravel quarry. It was a desolate place. Just a big hole in the ground with some water in the lowest spots.

A few minutes later we were back in our usual forms. Minus shoes, of course. And wearing our motley collection of morphing clothes.

"We look like a trapeze act from a cheap circus," Marco said. "Way too much Spandex."

"Don't start with the uniforms again," Rachel said.

“I'm just saying, colour coordination. We can be like the X-men.” Marco shut up suddenly and glanced at Jake. Probably remembering that this was his last mission. Jake gave him a sad, tiny smile.

"Come on,” Jake said. “We need to go back under that overhang. Out of sight." There was a sort of shallow cave in the quarry wall. Not deep at all, but it would hide us from anyone flying over.

"Great," Marco said. "The rocks will fall and crush us and we won't have to worry about the yeerks."

Jake ignored him. “Ax? You ready to trigger that thing?"

<Yes. I am very ready, Prince Jake.>

“Don’t call me ‘Prince’. Everyone ready to morph again?”

We gave a chorus of assenting sounds.

“Right. Ax, go. Everyone else, battle morphs.”

By 'battle morphs', he meant our most dangerous, deadly forms. He meant to get into a body that we could use to fight and kill. Jake himself was going tiger. Marco's rubbery gorilla skin was starting to crust over his soft, vulnerable human skin. Rachel needed to find her own separate overhang to hide her elephant morph. Tobias, of course, was stuck as a hawk; he drifted above and kept lookout. Ax would also remain in his natural form. Trying to move an andalite through the Gardens to acquire a new one was dangerous, and his natural form was plenty dangerous. He was also trained for tailblade combat and needed his fingers to work the distress beacon.

I had put a lot of thought into my own morph. I had access to a zoo and a rehabilitation centre full of animals, and I didn't have a single battle morph. Not one of my animals had been picked for its ability to hurt and kill. Did I want to slice my enemies with claws? Crush them under my feet? Inject them with venom, even? So many animals had venom. Even the 'safe' snakes that had had their venom sacs removed were a DNA source for a toxic morph.

The previous night I'd sat up compiling mental lists, poring through biology books, until exhaustion eventually pulled me into sleep. I'd reached no decision.

I knew that was wrong of me. I knew that not wanting to kill didn't change what I had to do to protect my planet. I knew that whether I had to hurt people or not was out of my control, that what I controlled was how safely I could do it. I still hadn't reached a decision. So I closed my eyes and thought of the wolf inside me.

Ax pressed the button on the side of his device. It made no sound. We looked at him quizzically with an assortment of animal eyes. <It is working,> he assured us.

We waited.

<Bet I could kick your butt,> Marco said to Jake.

<Yeah, monkey boy? I don't think so.>

<Hey, I could stomp both of you,> Rachel said. She walked closer, swinging her trunk and flaring her ears out. A moving mountain.

<This is so mature,> I said. <Arguing over who could beat who.> Whether we could hurt each other was irrelevant. The important factor was what our combined might would do to the crew of the ship we'd called down. One taxxon, one hork-bajir. Plenty dangerous.

<Hah. You're only saying that because we can all kick your butt, wolfie,> Marco shot back.

<You'd have to catch me first,> I pointed out. <And I could still be running long after the three of you were worn out and fast asleep.>

<You have an amazing variety of animals on your planet,> Ax said. <Some day, when the yeerks are defeated, andalites will come here simply to try out the many animal forms. It would be like a vacation.>

<Joe Andalite, you've won the Superbowl! Now where are you going?> Marco said, mimicking the Disney World commercials. <I'm going to Earth to turn into a lobster!>

<I don't understand,> Ax said.

Marco started to explain, but just then a red light began to flash on Ax's homemade distress beacon. <The response signal! They are coming!>

<Quick! Everyone to your places!> Jake said.

He slunk away, liquid power, to hide in the shadow of a boulder. Rachel pressed back under her own shallow overhang. I took Jake's right and prepared to spring, and Marco tried not to look like a four-hundred-pound gorilla behind a pile of gravel. Tobias flapped hard, struggling to gain altitude.

SWOOSH!

It came in low, just above tree level, then disappeared before turning to come back. A Bug fighter. Just as we'd planned.

<Here's your ride home, Ax,> Jake said.


	13. Chapter 13

Swoosh!

The bus-sized spaceship flew over once again, seemed to pause, then settled down toward the floor of the quarry. They had to be confused about the lack of ship to respond to. That didn't matter so long as they landed and opened the door to investigate. It landed silently, barely disturbing the ground. (How? How did it defy gravity like that?)

I held my breath.

<Wait for it,> Jake said. <Wait for it.>

The hatch opened. Out stepped a hork-bajir Controller.

They were every bit as terrifying as I remembered. More terrifying, now that I could get a good look at them unhampered by darkness or crowds. The hork-bajir was a good seven feet tall with a birdlike head and feet, a thick, spiked tail and blades along its muscular arms and legs. Blades on the upper arms, blades on the knees. Blades raking forward from the top of the head. It was like somebody had crossed a human with a dinosaur. And then added blades.

<Get ready.> Jake again.

The hork-bajir stepped clear of the Bug fighter. Then, he just stood there.

<There will be a taxxon inside,> Ax reminded us.

<Yeah. We know,> Marco said. He sounded tense. I didn't blame him.

Why was the hork-bajir just standing there? He should be looking around. After all, he was answering a distress beacon. Why was he just standing there like he was waiting for something?

<This feels like a trap,> Marco said.

<Everything feels like a trap to you,> Tobias pointed out.

<Only things that could be traps.>

<Tobias?> Jake asked.

<I'm not seeing anything but the Bug fighter.>

<Then we go ahead. One... Two… Three!>

"Tsseeeeerrrr!"

Tobias swooped, falling from the sky at close to a hundred miles an hour. He raked his talons forward and hit the hork-bajir's face.

"RROOWWWRR!" Jake leaped from cover. He sailed through the air and hit the hork-bajir with paws outstretched, claws bared.

The hork-bajir went down hard.

Jake rolled away as the hork-bajir slashed the air like an out-of-control Cuisinart.

But just then Rachel rumbled up, as big as a tank.

<Okay, back off, Jake,> Rachel said. <I have him.>

She pressed one big, tree-stump leg on the hork-bajir's chest and pressed him down against the ground. She did not crush him, just held him like a bug who could easily be squashed. The hork-bajir decided it was time to stop struggling and lie very still.

< Let's go!> Marco yelled. He ran forward; Ax and I followed. Our job was to get the taxxon pilot out of the way.

No. There was no use lying to ourselves. Our job was to kill the taxxon pilot and clear the cockpit so that Ax could take off before we had a bigger yeerk force to deal with. Marco was almost in the doorway when...

Zzzzzzzzaaapppp!

A brilliant red beam of light sliced the air just inches in front of us, blocking the way.

Zzzzzzzzaaaapppp!

Another beam of blinding red light. This crossed behind me. It exploded gravel into steam as it traced a path!

<Dracon beams!> Ax cried.

I spun around, looking for cover.

Zzzzzzaaaaappppp!

Up on the edge of the quarry! There were hork-bajir surrounding the pit, all armed with Dracon beams. All pointed at us. We were surrounded.

Completely surrounded.

<Stay in morph,> Jake snapped. <Don't let them know we're human.>

<Let's charge them!> Rachel yelled.

<No! You can't even climb up that rock face. Don't be stupid!>

<Tobias! You can get away!> I called.

<I don't think so,> he said. <No headwind. It would take me a couple of minutes to flap my way up out of here. They'd fry me before I got clear.>

The reality settled over us. The despair.

Plan. We needed a plan. I didn't have one, and there was no time, and I was just too tired to think properly...

<What are we going to do?> I asked.

<There has to be a way out! There has to be!> Rachel yelled.

<Not this time,> Marco said grimly.

We were trapped. Outnumbered. Outsmarted.

And that's when I felt it. The familiar dread creeping up my spine, threatening panic. The wolf in me wanted to cower and whine. I didn't let it. But we all knew he was there before he delicately stepped into view on the rock ledge above us. I fought the urge to cower, to run, to plead, to do anything but sit under his gaze.

<The Bug fighter,> I said. <We run for the Bug fighter.>

<I can cause a distraction,> Rachel added, <and shield you.> She knew she'd never fit. She almost managed to disguise the edge of panic in her own mental voice.

<They would destroy us before we could take off,> Ax said. He sounded vague, detached. His own way of fighting panic, I supposed.

<Well, well,> he said, thought-speaking to us. <I have you at last, my brave andalite bandits. Fools. Do you think we never change our frequencies?>

<Yeerk!> Ax said in a silent voice loaded with hatred.

Visser Three's main eyes focused on Ax. <A little one,> he said, surprised. <Are the andalites now reduced to using their children to fight?>

Ax started to say something, but Jake snapped, <Shut up, Ax! None of us communicates with him. Give him nothing.>

Ax fell silent, but he was practically vibrating with rage and hatred for the Visser. It wasn't surprising. Visser Three had killed his brother.

But Jake was right. We couldn't get into a conversation with Visser Three. The rest of us still wanted to hide the fact that we were human. We could too easily slip and reveal the truth. If I'd noticed the differences in the way humans and andalites thought-spoke, Visser Three definitely would.

Visser Three seemed to be enjoying his big moment. <What a colorful assortment of morphs,> he said. <Earth has such wonderful animals, don't you agree? When we have enslaved the humans and made this planet over in our image, we will have to be sure and keep some of these forms alive. It would be entertaining to try some of these morphs myself.>

None of us said anything. At least not anything that was human. Jake did snarl, drawing his tiger lip back over his teeth.

<Especially you,> Visser Three said to Jake. <That is a beautiful, deadly animal. I approve. In fact, I was going to demand you demorph. But I have a better idea. You see, we have a guest aboard the mother ship. It will be entertaining to show you to Visser One as you are.>

Visser One? Even through my shock and fear, I didn't miss the sneer in Visser Three's voice as he spoke the title. Apparently those two were not friends.

<Ax?> Jake asked. <Who is Visser One?>

<The highest-ranking Visser, answerable only to the Council of Thirteen,> Ax reported. <If my information is up-to-date, Visser One should be the one who started the invasion of Earth.>

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Visser Three must have given some signal, because at that moment his Blade ship appeared overhead, shimmering into view as it decloaked.

<We're better off making a run for it!> Rachel said.

<It would be suicide,> Marco said. <As long as we're alive, there's hope.>

<Yeah. Visser Three is taking us to the yeerk mother ship to show off for his boss. Some hope. We cannot give the yeerks five morph-capable hosts, Marco.> But she did nothing. We all did nothing. We just stood there, under the watchful eyes of a hundred hork-bajir.

They must have landed out of sight while we were busy attacking the one Bug fighter, dropped and decloaked while our lookout was going for the hork-bajir's eyes. Ax had used the wrong frequency. The yeerks had figured out we were laying a trap. And our trap had become Visser Three's trap. We'd even chosen the perfect yeerk ambush spot to call them! Stupid.

A couple of dozen of the hork-bajir leaped down from the high wall of the quarry and surrounded us. They kept their Dracon beams leveled at us as the Blade ship landed on the quarry floor.

"Go, obey farghurrash there horlitl!" one of the hork-bajir said. He pointed to the Blade ship. A door had opened in the side.

<I can't fit in there,> Rachel said.

But as she approached the door, the door widened to her size. It stretched and grew as if the metal skin of the Blade ship were alive. Interesting. That'd be something to look into, if we survived.

It was Marco I felt sorry for. It was his last mission. 'And to think, he was just one day from retirement.' Har. Har.

<This is not looking good,> Marco said to break the silence.

<No. It isn't. But we're not dead yet,> Jake answered.

<Yet. Why doesn't that make me happy?> Marco asked.

I looked around. We were all crammed into a windowless steel cube. Black, dimly lit steel walls on all six sides. No door. It was like a coffin.

You can break out of a coffin.

<We look like some kind of circus,> Marco said. <An elephant, a tiger, a gorilla, a wolf, and a freak of nature.>

We rustled up some halfhearted laughs. When bad things happen, Marco makes jokes. I get thinking. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it doesn't.

Elephant. Tiger. Gorilla. Wolf. Andalite. Hawk.

Claws, hands, teeth, tailblade, talons; useless. Rachel's bulk? Probably also useless on a ship that could shift its walls around like the Blade ship.

If we could get physically close enough to either of the Vissers, we'd have a hostage. But there was no way they were going to allow that.

<They won't leave us alone long,> I said. <They'll want to try to infest us before we're stuck in morph.>

<I will die before I allow one of those filthy slugs in my head,> Ax said vehemently.

<We all will,> Rachel said. <If they figure out who we are, they might go after our families next. In case they know something.>

Our families. My mum and dad. Jake's parents. Tom's yeerk would probably be punished; would that kill Tom? Rachel's parents and sisters. Marco's father.

Melissa. Her parents, probably, would also be punished.

<Ax,> I asked, <is there a way for the yeerks to render us helpless suddenly? A way to stun us or something?>

<Not without risking injury,> he said, <but... yes. Dracon beams can stun.>

For a few seconds, we were all silent. Then, Jake said, <Okay, everyone; we're still on for trying to get out of here, but if they start stunning us or disabling us for infestation... we can't allow them to infest us. Does everyone agree?>

<Understood.>

<Yes.>

<Yes, Prince Jake.>

<Definitely.>

Suddenly, a window opened in one of the walls. It just grew, the same way the door had before. Like the steel was alive. It formed a round porthole, large enough for all of us to see – even Rachel, who could only turn her massive head enough to look with one eye.

I gasped.

Below us, blue and white and so beautiful it brought tears to your eyes, was Earth. Sun sparkled off the ocean. Clouds swirled over the Gulf of Mexico, a big spiral, maybe a hurricane.

We looked. Through the eyes of the animals of Earth, but with the minds of human beings, we looked down at our planet.

Our planet.

The cradle of all life we'd known until a month or so ago. The home of every one of our ancestors, our evolutionary cousins, every spark of life we had any connection to. What we'd fought to protect. It had been the right decision. No matter what happened, the fight had been the right decision.

Then something different came into view, as the Blade ship rotated away from Earth.

<This is why the yeerks opened a window,> Ax said. <This is what they wanted us to see. So that we would despair.>

The mother ship.

It was a gigantic, three-legged insect. The center was a single, bloated sphere. The sphere was flatter on the bottom, and from the bottom hung a weird, mismatched series of tendrils. Like the tendrils of a jellyfish. Each one must have been a quarter-mile long. It was huge. It was menacing.

It was nothing compared to a planet. It was nothing compared to a little girl wearing a star pendant who knew the threat her parents were. To a planetful of clever humans who would, eventually, learn that they were in danger. To a world of vicious surprises and new challenges that no rushed alien invasion could be ready for.

I was lying to myself. The yeerks had conquered other planets, subjugated other species. My own love for earth didn't change that. This was no time to be lying to myself.

Around the sphere were three legs, bent up, then back down, exactly like a spider's legs.

<The legs are the engines,> Ax explained. <The tendrils hanging down below the belly are weapons and sensors and energy collectors. That is also where the shipboard Kandrona is. The yeerks must bathe in the yeerk pool every three days and absorb Kandrona rays. There must be one on the planet below, too.>

<Yeah. We know,> Marco said. <Your brother told us. For all the good it did us.>

It just hung in orbit, like a predator gazing down hungrily at blue Earth below.

<I can't believe people on Earth don't see this on radar,> Rachel said. <I mean, it's huge. It's a city!>

<It is shielded,> Ax said simply. <It cannot be seen by radar. And it would normally be invisible to us. Visser Three is showing it to us. To terrify us.>

<He's doing a good job,> Marco said.

<I've never been in space before,> I said. <I always wished I could. I always wanted to see Earth, all in one piece like that.>

<It is a lovely planet,> Ax said gently. <Not so different from mine. Except that we have less ocean and more grassland. I ... I am sorry I brought you all to this. This is my fault.>

<Ax, you're only here because your people wanted to protect us,> I said. <Your brother and a lot of Andalites died trying to save us. Nothing is your fault.>

<One too many missions> Marco muttered. <This was going to be my last one. Now . . . well, it will still be my last one.>

We approached an opening in the side of the yeerk mother ship - a docking port. As I watched, a pair of quick Bug fighters flew in, dwarfed by the size of the opening. A minute later, we entered the docking port and were suddenly bathed in deep red light.

Through the window, we could see yeerk crewmen - hork-bajir, taxxons, and two or three other alien species, in simple red or dark brown uniforms. And there were humans, too. Human-controllers in space on an alien ship. What an introduction to the galaxy that was for our species. There was a slight shudder as the Blade ship came to a halt.

<Ax?> Jake asked. <What's our morph time?>

<Forty eight of your minutes,> Ax replied.

<Before we die, I just want to mention that they aren't 'our' minutes,> Marco said. <They're minutes. Everyone's minutes. Awesome as it would be, humans do not own time.>

<Maybe Rachel is right,> Tobias said. <Maybe we should just go out in a blaze of glory. Attack as soon as they open the door. At least we can let them know we were here.>

I saw Jake extend his claws, as if he were thinking about using them. He glanced at where the door had once been, like he was measuring the distance. I knew that he was listening to the tiger in his head.

Then he seemed to relax. <No,> he said. <We have to have hope.>

I sidled up and nuzzled him. <It's not over until we're dead.>

<We gave them a pretty good fight, didn't we?> Marco said. <Our little circus? We did some damage to them.>

<Yes, we did,> Rachel agreed.

<Do...> Ax hesitated. Then, <Do humans fear death?>

<Yes. We're not crazy about death,> Marco answered. <How about andalites?>

<We are also, ah, 'not crazy' about it.>

Through the window we could see a lot of hork-bajir and taxxons and humans running around, racing to get somewhere. They were lining up. And now, I noticed, there were distinct kinds of uniforms; some in the plain brown clothing I was already familiar with, and some in fancier uniforms of two distinct colors; one mustard-and-black, the other white-and-black. The brown uniforms were all around the edges, like they were less important.

Suddenly, without warning, the window stretched open into a large, arched doorway. Fetid air rushed in, smelling of oil and chemicals and something else. My wolf nose picked out dozens of scents and recognised nearly none of them.

A ramp rose up from the steel floor outside to meet us. We were standing like a display at the top of the ramp. All around, filling this side of the docking bay, were uniformed hork-bajir, taxxons, and humans. Most were in mustard-and-black. Perhaps two hundred creatures, standing in stiff rows, arranged by species.

About a quarter of the total were in white-and-black. There were more humans in this group, but also some unusually massive hork-bajir. And there was something about the way they were standing...

<I have a feeling,> I said. <I don't think the mustard-uniformed guards like the white ones.>

<The what?> Tobias asked.

<The uniforms,> Jake explained. <The mustard Controllers and white Controllers don't like each other.>

There was a slight pause.

<You're both colorblind, aren't you?> Marco asked.

<... Yes. What color are they?>

<Red and gold.>

<Oh.>

Ax brought us back on topic. <I think they are troops of two different Vissers. I...I think I overheard my brother talk about that. Each Visser has his own private army in their own uniforms.>

<Swell. I wonder which group gets to have us?> Marco said.

Far at the back of the rows of alien troops, there was a movement. A party of creatures walking to the front.

Visser Three was at the center, followed by two big hork-bajir in mustard... that is, in red. Just to his left was a human. She wasn't in uniform, but her rank was obvious from the deference displayed by everyone else.

Then, in thought-speak that all could hear, Visser Three turned to the woman beside him. <You see, Visser One, I have taken the andalite bandits. The crisis is over. Your trip here is wasted, and you can return to your assignment.>

Visser One nodded. She looked up at us with dark brown, human eyes. Human. Visser One had a human body.

I don't know why that struck me as incredibly funny. Visser Three was a hateful morphing alien that could turn into any number of horrible creatures, and this superior he hated so much was a little dark-haired woman. She was thin, barely reaching Visser Three's shoulder, and her brown hair was trimmed into a neat bob. She was wearing a little pink knitted cardigan! Fortunately, wolves don't laugh in any way that humans tend to notice, so it was easy to hide my reaction. Marco had more trouble; he fell backwards onto his butt.

I tried to memorise Visser One's face and scent. _Keep doing your job. Don't give up._

<Why, Visser One,> Visser Three sneered, <you seem to have frightened the humanoid one.>

"It is called a gorilla," Visser One said coldly. "If you are going to be in charge of Earth, Visser Three, you should at least learn something about the planet."

<And take a human host body, like you did? No, I think not. Human bodies are weak. I much prefer this andalite host.>

She looked at him and curled her lip. "I took a human host and learned about the planet and the humans. And because of that I was able to begin the invasion that you have now endangered with your criminal incompetence!"

Visser Three's deadly andalite tail twitched, as if he was going to stab Visser One. The red troops tensed up. The gold troops let their hands edge toward their weapons.

<Ooookay,> Rachel said. <I think we were right. These two definitely don't like each other.>

Visser Three slowly relaxed. <You would like to provoke me, Visser One,> he said. <But the fact is that I destroyed the andalite force. I shot down their dome ship. I killed Prince Elfangor myself and heard his dying screams. And now I have eliminated this last, pathetic rabble of andalites.>

Visser One just smiled. "You want to be Visser One? You think you can take my title? We shall see. The Council of Thirteen does not like Vissers who make mistakes. And you have made mistakes. Be careful of your own ambition."

She snapped her fingers, and every one of the soldiers in gold turned. Then she walked away, followed by her troops.

<We ready for blaze of glory yet?> Rachel asked tersely. Rachel did not like being helpless.

Visser Three still stared at us. I think he wasn't sure what to do next.

<Six andalites,> he said. <Six andalite bodies that could be used by my most loyal lieutenants.>

Ax exploded. <And then there would be others like you, you filth! Other andalite-Controllers. More unnatural abominations like your vile self!>

Visser Three cocked his head thoughtfully. <Why are you the only one who speaks? You're right, of course: Why would I allow anyone to acquire andalite morphing powers? But you are a child. Why do the others remain silent? And why do you all still hide in your morphs? Curious. Very curious.>

He seemed to think it over for a minute. Would he realize the truth? Would he figure out that the reason we remained silent was so he wouldn't guess that we were human? Would he figure out that's why we stayed in morph?

We didn't respond. His eyes narrowed. <I see. You will not deign to speak to me. I suppose a yeerk 'abomination' is below the notice of proud andalite warriors such as yourselves. And yet you are so afraid of my kind, of what we can make you into, that you won't even demorph and fight like andalites. And if you die here, you won't die like andalites.> He turned away, not even bothering to keep a stalk eye on us. <Take them back to a holding cell. Triple the guard. If there is the slightest trouble, kill them.>


	14. Chapter 14

_If there is the slightest trouble, kill them._

That was preferable to infestation. I don't think I would've made that decision if I hadn't been an Animorph. If normal Cassie had the choice, I probably would've chosen to stay and fight in my own head. But I wasn't going to give them what I knew, I wasn't going to give them any reason to go after my parents, and I wasn't going to give them a morph-capable host.

<Are we ready for Blaze of Glory _now_? > Rachel asked again as we were marched down a hallway. She ambled placidly along at the head of our party, taking up the entire corridor, the rest of us loping behind. Tobias rode on Marco's shoulder. The hallway was too confined to fly comfortably.

<If we make a wrong move, they cut us down,> Jake replied evenly.

<If we don't, death is the best result!> Rachel snapped. <There must be something we can do!>

Ax said, <My people have a saying - grace is the acceptance of the inevitable.>

<Yeah?> Marco said suddenly. <Well, I don't accept. That's what they want. They want the entire human race to lie down and accept the inevitable.> His mental voice was strained. It trembled with anger. He had to be thinking of his father, the father he didn't want to leave alone to mourn two graves. <I have a saying for you. I got it from a fortune cookie. 'Fall down seven times, get up eight.' You know what that means? That means you don't ever just lie there. You always get up. You always come back for more. You never surrender. Maybe you die, but you never surrender.>

None of us stopped walking or turned our heads. But we were all silent for several seconds.

<I can't turn in here,> Rachel said, <but if you guys can find a way to take out the guards behind then I can clear a forward path.>

<Where on the ship are we?> I asked.

<Does it matter?> Rachel asked. <We'll never escape, it's just a question of how much damage we can do.>

<I wasn't thinking of escape. I was thinking of attacking the yeerks' weapons systems.>

<Ax,> Marco said, <how much would it hurt the yeerks if we destroyed the Kandrona?>

<They would have to bring in a new Pool ship,> Ax said, excited. <It would be a huge economic blow. And more than half of the yeerks here could die. Yeerks would have to be ferried to the planetside yeerk pool, which may be hard to hide from the human population.>

<That,> Marco said in a voice like steel. <We do that.>

<Right,> Jake said. <Rachel, ready to charge a path. We're aiming downwards. Everyone else, the guards. Ax, be ready to guide us as soon as you think you know where the Kandrona is. On three.> We all knew our chances of surviving the initial charge were slim. Our chances of making it to the Kandrona were nearly nonexistent. But no matter what the fear twisting my gut said, the slim chance was better than the no chance we had being good little prisoners. <One. Two. Three!>

We twisted, leapt. Dracon beams fired. I grabbed a hork-bajir arm and was flung into a wall. I felt my body smack against it and saw Jake take advantage of the hork-bajir's distraction to hamstring it. Rachel trumpeted, and charged forward.

The air was hot with laser blasts. Marco was missing one hand, but swiped with the other in grim, detached determination. I leapt for the throat of a hork-bajir who was aiming at Ax. Ax himself was busy slicing off the hand of a human aiming a Dracon beam at Jake.

We were going to lose.

The space was too confined. There were too many enemies. We were already injured. My left front leg hadn't been working properly since my impact with the wall. Jake had a large hork-bajir blade wound across his back. Ax had a burn in one flank that for a moment reminded me of Prince Elfangor stumbling out of his ship, but it couldn't have been as severe; he was still up and fighting.

I grabbed a hand. Another took aim. More lasers filled the air.

Our enemies dropped. All of them.

I looked up. Just meters away stood a line seven gold-and-black uniformed hork-bajir. Most of them were already peeling away and wandering off like we weren't even there. One stepped forward.

"This hallway goes on in that direction for a hundred feet,” he said in perfect English, pointing to his left. "Then comes a guard station, where there will be two hork-bajir and a taxxon. From there, four hallways. Take the one furthest to your left. Follow it to a dropshaft. Take the dropshaft down fifteen decks. Directly ahead you will see escape pods." He looked at Rachel. "You are too large in that morph to fit in the escape pod. You will need to demorph when you get there. The pod is programmed to return you to the planet in the same area where you were seized. The pod will then self-destruct. Do you understand?"

We all just stared.

<It's a trap,> Tobias said.

<No. We're already trapped. They could kill us any time,> Marco said.

<Marco's right,> Jake said. <Why let us escape if they want to kill us?>

<This is one of Visser One's soldiers,> Ax pointed out. <It would be very embarrassing for Visser Three if his prisoners should escape, no?>

Politics? They were endangering their entire invasion over politics? <It's about politics! Visser One is making Visser Three look bad. If we escape, it will be blamed on Visser Three.>

"You will have to deal with any of Visser Three's troops you encounter between here and the escape pod," the gold-clad hork-bajir said. "Leave. Now."

<Ax?> Jake asked.

<Eighteen of your minutes are left.>

<Let's do it,> Jake said. <Rachel? Head the charge.>

Whomp ! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

Rachel made the steel floor vibrate with each massive step. Her leathery sides scraped the corridor walls so that I could only catch occasional glimpses past her.

The hallway was empty until we reached the guard station. Just as the hork-bajir had said.

Rachel didn't even slow down.

Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

I saw a flash of a taxxon, foolishly running as if to cut her off. A few seconds later I had to jump over the crushed remnants of the big centipede. A red-uniformed hork-bajir exploded out a side corridor. <Look out! hork-bajir!> I warned.

Swooosh!

A razor-bladed arm sliced the air inches in front of my face.

<More coming!> Tobias warned. <Both directions! All of them in red!>

<I can't turn around!> Rachel moaned.

<I knew it couldn't be that easy,> Marco said.

<Remember that our priority is escape,> Jake cautioned.

He leapt. We fought. Marco slammed a hork-bajir into the ceiling and he came back unconscious. Ax's tail flashed and one staggered back minus an arm. We barrelled forward.

<Left tunnel,> Jake reminded Rachel. <Look for a dropshaft, whatever that is. The longer we stay here, the more of these guys are going to show up.>

Just then, right on cue, two more hork-bajir came up from behind us. <You guys move! I'll deal with them,> Jake said.

The hork-bajir rushed us.

"RRRRRRROOOOOWWWRRR!"

Jake let loose with a roar that must have been heard from one end of the mother ship to the other. It even scared me. And it sure made the hork-bajir hesitate. He was on them, while they were still thinking about what to do next.

Hork-bajir are very fast. But so are tigers.

One hork-bajir was down, with Jake sinking fangs into his snakelike neck. The other hork-bajir looked around to make sure no one could see him, then decided he'd like to live. He kept his distance.

Jake backed away but kept his face turned to the hork-bajir behind us. We trotted as fast as we could down the hallway, now a scene of devastation.

Suddenly . . .

<Ahhhhhhh!>

<Rachel!> I heard Tobias cry.

<It's okay. I found the dropshaft. I am ... dropping.>

<What is it?> I asked.

<An elevator without a floor,> Rachel answered.

Then I was there, at the edge of a long shaft that went down and down, maybe forever. Rachel already looked small. Which was not easy for her to do.

<He said to stop after fifteen levels!> Marco reminded her.

<Yeah? And how do I do that?>

<Think the number! It hears speech and understands simple thought-speak commands,> Ax instructed. Then added, <At least, that's how it works on our ships .>

<I'm slowing down. Cool!>

<More hork-bajir back here! And some of those other ones. The little wrinkled ones!>I reported. <They're coming fast!>

<Here goes nothing,> I said. I took a look down the dropshaft and jumped off into empty space.

You know, if it hadn't been for the fact that I was just a few minutes from being trapped forever in a morph, and if there weren't a dozen or so hostile, bladed aliens after me, it would have been fun.

I fell, but not too fast.

<Fifteen levels,> I thought as floors zipped past me.

Twelve levels down, I plummeted past a human Controller who was getting ready to step into the dropshaft. He had a very human look of total amazement on his face. Possibly because while standing there, he'd seen a flying elephant, followed by a gorilla, an andalite, a wolf and a tiger.

<Hork-bajir, coming fast!> Tobias warned.

I looked up the shaft. A big hork-bajir warrior was gaining on us. He plunged, feet-first, big talons angled down as if he was going to stab us with them.

<He's mine,> Tobias said. He flared his wings, flapped hard and was shooting back up the dropshaft toward the falling hork-bajir.

"Tseeeeer!"

Tobias's talons came forward, outstretched, and slashed the alien's eyes.

"Ghaahharrr!"

The hork-bajir clutched at his face. I guess he was too distracted to think about what floor he was heading to. He shot past us as we slowed to step onto the fifteenth level.

Hard floor under my feet again! A very good feeling.

<Rachel! You have to demorph!> I reminded her.

<Already working on it,> she said. She was shrinking even as she lumbered along.

<The escape pods! Ahead there!> Ax cried.

They were only a dozen feet from us. A few seconds more and we would make it. Rachel stumbled. She was half-human, half-elephant. A nightmare of pink and grey, with huge ears and human hair and fat arms and legs that had no feet. Marco reached down and swept her up with his powerful arms. We reached the door of the escape pod. It closed behind us as we wedged our over sized bodies inside.

<Morph out!> Jake yelled, unnecessarily. My hands were already appearing and Marco had shrunk noticeably in the time it took us to get inside. There was a surge as the escape pod ejected from the underside of the yeerk ship. It rotated, and the Earth came into view once again.

Earth. Our planet. The planet we were still here to protect.

I felt the last of the wolf melt into my human body. No alien menace was taking our planet so easily.


	15. Chapter 15

The next day, I went for a walk to visit a woman I'd never met. I'd gotten the address from Ax. He had a good head for space as well as time. I took the bus; I didn't want to go doorknocking in my morphing outfit.

The woman who answered the door matched the description I'd been given. Sandy blonde hair, blue eyes, a lot of mascara. Stressed look. She could be Rachel in thirty years. She sort of peeked around the door, not opening it all the way. “Yes?”

I smiled gently. “I'm sorry to disturb you, ma'am. My name is Catherine. I'm here about some lobsters you bought the other day.”

A narrowing of the eyes. A narrowing of the door gap. Good. Good signs.

“It's okay, I'm not here to hurt you.”

“I don't know anything.”

“I'm not here to question you either. I'm here to explain.”

The door gap widened a little. “To explain?”

“Yes.”

And I did. I told her about the yeerks. I told her about the Sharing. I told her that we andalites were there to protect her planet, and that we'd enlisted two human teenagers to help us navigate local culture – it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I told her that it was very, very important that nobody learn about those two.

I told her that we might fail. That we were going to do everything possible to protect Earth, but we were few. I told her that it was very, very important that she didn't get herself captured by the yeerks, because they were mind readers and it would compromise us as well, but that she should think about how to protect her planet if we couldn't. I suggested strongly that she move house. I told her about the yeerk pool and the Kandrona. I told her about Visser Three.

We could die at any time defending our planet. We'd try not to. But we were five human kids and an andalite cadet against an invading alien force. If we died, all hope was lost.

We couldn't guarantee that we wouldn't die. But we could make sure that not all hope was lost with us.

I bid the woman goodbye and headed off. She watched me nervously as I walked away, with the wide, somewhat blank eyes of somebody whose world had just been turned upside down. Somebody who had just learned that the world was a bigger place than they had ever known. And somewhere behind the bright blue sky overhead, far out of Earth's atmosphere, hung the pool ship.

 _You want humans?_ I thought. _Come on then. I dare you. We'll show you humans._


End file.
